The MAGA world has been harboring suspicions and fears about activist judges, and those misgivings seem to have been confirmed. Not merely by one more sweeping injunction against the administration of President Donald Trump, but by what one federal judge wrote in a recent ruling. It was another immigration-related judgment: a detainee, or rather two detainees, whose releases have been ordered by US District Judge Fred Biery.
The tone of the judge’s order was stunning, one might say. “I honestly thought this was fake,” Chad Mizelle wrote on X. Mizelle is Attorney General Pam Bondi’s former chief of staff. Mizelle went on, “I really hope this is a joke, because if not, this is the biggest validation of our criticism since Day 1 that the liberal judiciary is unhinged.” Liberty Nation depends on the support of our readers. Donate now!
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who has a list of activist judges he wants Congress to take action against, wrote, “This federal judge misspelled ‘impeach me — immediately.’”
A father and his five-year-old son were recently detained by federal immigration agents in Minnesota. The father abandoned his child while trying to evade the agents. The boy’s mother refused to take custody of him. After the father was apprehended, the two, father and son, were transported to a detention facility in Texas.
Judge Biery’s order releasing the pair, who are reportedly now back in Minnesota, was full of self-righteous bluster and open contempt for the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. Biery can be given at least a little credit for not challenging the legality of the pair’s likely future deportation, but this was less a legal ruling than a political rant. Biery may well have earned himself the title of Poster Boy for activist judges – at least among conservatives.
The judge went on to use quotes from Thomas Jefferson and the Bible completely out of context and also stated, “Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.”
In what can fairly be described as a snarky tone, Biery wrapped up his diatribe with a recollection (though misquoted by the good judge) of that famous moment following the ratification of the US Constitution: “Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: ‘Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?’ ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’”
Elizabeth Willing Powel’s actual question to Benjamin Franklin was, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
The judge ended his order with a flush of megalomania so apparently overwhelming that he invented a new date in the 2026 calendar:
“With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,
“It is so ORDERED.
“SIGNED this 31st day of February, 2026.”
Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson introduced America to a new, warped version of jurisprudence that was based more in emotion than in raw interpretations of the US Code or the Constitution. In the era of President Trump – or perhaps the second era – the Brown Jackson School of Judgeness appears to have a great many students who happen to be federal judges.
A number of them seem well-deserving of the label activist judges.
Of course, Justice Jackson is not the originator of this trend of judges injecting their personal political views into legal deliberations. She is merely another product of a movement that has upended all norms in the pursuit of an ideological transformation of society. As things stand today, one wonders if the erstwhile favorite phrase of elected Democrats, “no one is above the law,” does not apply to anyone they see as potential political allies or supporters.
Here at the start of 2026 – the 250th year of the United States of America – rational people may wonder if this country still has a functioning judicial system.
